Downloading PDF files onto iOS devices, Part 2

  • Greetings,

    We are also experiencing issues with iPhone users not being able to download PDF files.

    When iPhone users tap any WP Download Manager link on our website to download a PDF… they get “gibberish” or “garbage” text. (What they’re seeing is the raw PDF file, just as if it were opened in a text editor). These same files can be downloaded by Android devices with no problem, and the iPhone users can download PDF files from other places on the Internet with no problem. So why is WP Download Manager doing this to iPhone users who browse the web using Safari?

    After reading the forum topic by @judylmohr regarding this exact same problem, we tried disabling “Resumable Downloads” and “Output Buffering” from Settings, as suggested by @savvasha but it did not alleviate the problem.

    Here is an example:
    https://www.shoreshdavid.org/download/definitive-guide-to-social-media-2018/?wpdmdl=5372&masterkey=5d8e52736e933

    The only workaround to keep us from getting complaints by iPhone users is to post DIRECT LINKS to our PDF files for everybody, which circumvents WP Download Manager and defeats the purpose of using the plugin. Help.

    /Chris

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Plugin Contributor Shahriar Alam

    (@shahriar0822)

    Hi,

    I just downloaded the PDf from here https://www.shoreshdavid.org/download/definitive-guide-to-social-media-2018 using iPhone X

    https://prntscr.com/pcs6np

    There was no issue on my case. Is this issue related to any specific model?

    Thanks.

    • This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by Shahriar Alam.
    Thread Starter shoreshdavid

    (@shoreshdavid)

    Hi Shahriar,

    Sorry.. wordpress.com failed to send me an email letting me know there was a new reply to this topic even though I did check “Notify me of follow-up replies via email” checked. (I do receive their marketing info so.. I don’t know.)

    Anyway, we have two iPhones that I can test with, each is an iPhone 8 Plus running on iOS v12.4.1. Okay so the previous link was a bad example. Just now I added a new PDF to WP Download Manager and copied the link:

    https://www.shoreshdavid.org/download/test-document/?wpdmdl=5544&masterkey=5d9658f64448a

    When I try to open it on our iPhones, this is what appears on the screen:

    https://prnt.sc/peitnx

    For some reason PDF files are being treated as text files. If this was happening to just one iPhone then I’d say it was a fluke. But this problem is happening with multiple iPhones including those of user @judylmohr who opened that previous support topic.

    /Chris

    @shoreshdavid and @shahriar0822
    It was a browser specific issue, such that anyone using Chrome on any iOS device encountered issues. However, after disabling the “Google Captcha” on all of my downloads, everything seems to be working.

    I’m guessing that there was a conflict with Google Captcha that sent everything into a tizzy.

    Thread Starter shoreshdavid

    (@shoreshdavid)

    @judylmohr: Thank you for the additional information.

    @shahriar0822: Just so you are aware, we don’t have “Google Captcha” enabled for any of our downloads. And our users with iPhones use Chrome (no 3rd party web browsers installed). Besides, PDF files should be downloadable via WP Download Manager regardless of which browser the end user is using.

    Just to reiterate… downloading PDF files fail miserably for iPhone users (works fine on Android and Windows) until we circumvent WP Download Manager. If we give them a direct link to those same PDF files (without moving the files or anything) then they can open/view them with no trouble. Enabling and disabling “Resumable Downloads” and “Output Buffering” in DM has no effect.

    The problem is very much an issue with the plugin. We purchased WP Download Manager to host PDF files on our website and, with the sheer number of iPhone users out there, this is serious.

    /Chris

    Thread Starter shoreshdavid

    (@shoreshdavid)

    There’s no fix for this problem then?

    The way things are currently working, either (1) iPhone users have to suffer by not being able to download our PDFs like everyone else, or (2) we’re forced to use direct links which circumvents WPDM altogether.

    We PAID money for this!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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